In 2007, Mum's symptoms of dementia first became very noticeable in the form of unusual behaviour such as barricading doors, tying up gates with handkerchiefs, calling the police all the time to imagined intruders and obsessing over her two cats. But even years before that, she'd made bad judgments with money, selling her house to a conwoman for $100,000 less than it was worth and wasting money on employing tradesmen to carry out unnecessary work. She only became seriously forgetful in 2010.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Too much cat food!

Cat food has been a problem for a number of years: too much of it. Mum would leave tinned food on plates (used by her afterwards, from the family dinner set) in the bathroom, in the kitchen and in the laundry. At times you'd step in it, there was so much of it. She is sure if she doesn't leave it all over the house, the cat won't find its food and will slowly die of starvation. This is SO annoying. Worse still, she buys the most expensive food for the cat. The dry food comes from the vet in bags that cost $58 and are meant to last three months, but are used up in a week or so.

Now that she has stolen the cat from up the road, it is double trouble.

I've hit on an idea, though. Her eyesight is terrible, so I've been buying cheap dry food from the supermarket and topping up the $58 bag. Now it's almost entirely filled with Whiskettes instead of Science Diet.

As long as she doesn't notice, we'll never have to go back to the vet for expensive food again! I'll just keep topping it up and she'll think there's plenty left.

I can't do anything about the tinned food, but at least we're saving on the other one. I'm learning that you have to tell little fibs in order to survive this.